Racism and it’s various manifestations such as eugenics is a Janus faced monster of human society. One side speaks to people’s fear and hate, and is social and political. It speaks a sermon to the angry and downtrodden who love to hear that their “race” is superior, or to the social managers and engineers who benefit from a handy excuse to explain the results of repression and economic inequality as the natural outcome of history and circumstance beyond our control and thus not the fault of those self same social managers and engineers.
The other face is the biological one, the scientific description of “race” itself, and the scientific explanation for racial differences.
Each of these aspects of modern racism can act independently and to some extent have different histories, but by and large they are two parts of the same trend. Prior to Eugenics, the biological side of this monster was not scientific, and was in fact typically religious. When European Christians needed to explain the people of the New World (how the heck did they get there, and who were they, really?) or the “savages” of Africa, they turned to the bible, and there found the basis for “lost tribes” and “mud people” (the latter really more like mud-subhumans). The discussion in the late 17th century through the 18th century was about which group of people had souls, and what kinds of religious conversions could be done, and if conversions could or could not be done, what should be done with these people who could not be converted. Slavery was a very convenient option, sanctioned in the bible. To exterminate or rout out the humans or near-humans standing in the way of occupation of the land was a clear option also outlined in the bible. Taking the land, the goods, and the women (cattle if at all possible!) from the non-believers was not only sanctioned but instructed by by god himself. A sort of twist of the old expression: From god’s mouth to your ears, Conquistador!
Just as the religious view of nature (a la Natural History) was supplanted during the last part of the 19th century through the early 20th century with a scientific/naturalistic view, so was the biblical naturalism of racism replaced to varying degrees with scientific racism, most commonly known (but not limited to) eugenics. Eugenics made sense to a lot of people. Then-modern biological theories could explain racial differences and offer cures to many social problems.
But it is simply not the case that all biologists converted to eugenics at the time. Many people rallied and wrote against it. A huge debate lasting decades ensued and by the end of World War II (actually much sooner in many quarters) the “scientific basis” of eugenics was largely destroyed within science, yet it lingered among the social engineers and politicians, as it does today.
One could think of biological racism and eugenics as bad ideas for a lot of reasons that have nothing to do with science. But these arguments aside, the fact is that these concepts are simply scientifically unfounded and unsupportable. The process of scientific inquiry, debate, research, and analysis has resulted in this simple set of conclusions: The “races” themselves are illusory, the genetic determinism of behavior and ability is without foundation, and the ethnic or identity based linkage to correlated genes is nonsense. Yet, the concept of race remains just as strong today as it ever was, outside of the biological sciences.
The thing we call Biology (the Science of Biology), with Charles Darwin as a very significant contributor, is one place where the race argument — an argument that had already been formed and was already one of the most powerful social forces in “Western Society” since the Renaissance — was taken up, run through the mill, and eventually discarded as bankrupt. This is not so true in political science. In modern political science, the race concept is alive and well. This is not so true among the religious. In religious quarters we see the race concept often used and often promoted. The race concept is alive and well but not in the biological sciences.
I would argue that the biological sciences constitute the only sizable modern entity (body of thought, point of view, etc) from which the race concept has been removed with only minor, and very annoying but largely circumscribed and within the field of biology ignored, vestiges. The churches, their messages and their works are often steeped in racism. The conservative politicians have taken racist doctrine on as a way of obtaining votes and as a tool in implementing policy.
The linkage we see now and then from creationists, between Darwin and Eugenics, is a pitiful attempt at smokescreen, a kind of vaporous wedge strategy, that makes me laugh and cry at the same time.
A recent example: Melissa McNamara at Blogophile (CBS, no longer available) discusses the Blogosphere’s involvement in Mardi Gras, as well as Darwin Day, and in so doing quite innocently points us to the Anti-Celebration of Darwin Day on at least one blog (Open Book). The Open Book is a Catholic web site that quotes extensively from (and in so doing makes a very funny error — look out for cherry picking, you can change history!) David Klinghoffer, writing in in the Daily Standard, who discusses the beginnings of the Eugenics movement early in the 20th century, making explicit the link to then still emerging Darwinian Theory. To be fair, he also states that
Darwin himself opposed discriminating against the weak and helpless, but his disciples were less principled. The major ethical impact of the Darwinian idea has been to undercut what contemporary Princeton bio-ethicist Peter Singer decries as the “Hebrew view” of a purposefully-designed humanity, crowned by the solemn and central theme: “And God said, Let us make man in our image.”
Don’t get me wrong, (I’m not trying to mine quotes here) Klinghoffer is clear that he feels that Darwinism, of the early 20th century as well as today, is immoral and dangerous.
Mr. Klinghoffer (as well as “Open Book”) have thus spent some energy linking (incorrectly) the Eugenics movement with Darwin. How much energy have they spent recently on fighting (or at least discussing) racism itself? Do they even care, or do they simply want to cast any available stone at biological science, regardless of such fine ideals as truthfulness?
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